8. Mobile User Interfaces

Mobile applications are subject to design constraints including processing power, reduced screen size, and limited or unreliable network connectivity. Addressing these constraints while still delivering functional applications is the goal of numerous technology platforms, development techniques, and dedicated technical books. There are endless methods for building mobile applications, all of them equally valid depending on the details of the device, application, and needs of the user.

Salesforce and the Force.com platform support the latest best practices and technology platforms used to develop mobile applications, extending them with dedicated toolkits and hooks in the Force.com platform. This chapter provides exposure to the common approaches to building mobile applications and dives deeper on one specific approach, the mobile Web (also referred to as HTML5) application. It is organized into the following sections:

Overview of Salesforce mobile technology—Get familiar with how Salesforce supports mobile devices in terms of its own applications and custom applications.

Getting started with mobile Web applications—Walk through the technology components and choices for building mobile Web applications using Force.com.

Sample application—Create a phone and tablet-friendly timecard entry feature for the Services Manager sample application.